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Regarding Fire by Hozan Alan Senauke

What All is aflame? The eye is aflame. Forms are aflame. Consciousness at the eye is aflame…Aflame with what? Aflame with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Aflame, I tell you, with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.

— “Aditta-pariyaya Sutta” / “The Fire Sermon” Samyutta Nikaya XXXV.28

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

— Bertrand Russell

More than thirty Tibetans have set themselves on fire since February of 2011. They are mostly young monks and nuns protesting the Chinese government’s systematic destruction of the Tibetan people, its repression of Buddhism, and the relentless demonization of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. What began as a tragic, shocking, and exceptional action is still shocking. But I question its strategic value, human and political costs, and Dharmic implications.

The Chinese oppression of Tibet and its people has been relentless over more than fifty years. Arguably this is a case of genocide. It is difficult to raise questions about the fiery death of monks, since they raise doubts about the most intense, and possibly the most sincere, kind of political statement. Just to entertain doubts in public may be seen as disrespect to those who have given their lives. Still ignoring such question will not make them go away.

As an act of contemporary protest self-immolation dates back to the 60s and war in Vietnam. Here and there one can find accounts of Buddhist monks “using their bodies like a lamp” dating back to the fifth century. The word “immolation” has an interesting Latin root. Immolare, meaning “sacrifice,” comes from mola salsa, or salted flour, applied by ancient Vestal Virgins and other ceremonial officiants to animal offerings, placing it on the forehead or between the animal’s horns for ritual purification. In another time and place, Chinese and Japanese monks have often used burning moxa or mugwort to scar their heads and other parts of the body as a sign of renunciation.

The last example of self-cremation in Vietnam dates from the eighteenth century. There is also a record of a Chinese monk setting himself on fire as a protest against the Maoist repression of Buddhism in 1948. But the fiery death of a senior Vietnamese monk, Thich Quang Duc, on June 11, 1963 established a new precedent.

At midday of June 11 a procession of three hundred Buddhist monks, nuns, and laypeople, led by Thich Quang Duc arrived at a busy intersection in central Saigon. They were protesting the persecution of Vietnamese Buddhists by President Ngo Dinh Diem and South Vietnam’s Roman Catholic-oriented government. Thich Quang Duc sat crosslegged on a cushion in the street. People encircled him, held back by a cohort of police with long batons. A younger monk poured gasoline over Thich Quang Duc, and after reciting prayers to Amitabha Buddha, he struck a match and set himself aflame.

Journalist David Halbertstam, who was present that day, later wrote:

Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think … As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

After Thich Quang Duc’s death, his remains were ceremonially cremated. Mysteriously his heart remained intact, unconsumed by the fires. Within months, the Diem government was toppled in a violent coup. Immolations in Vietnam continued and escalated, spreading as a recognized expression of resistance and the deepest opposition to political and social oppression.

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The discourse around self-immolation and other kinds of public suicide is complex. It is inseparable from charged emotions, philosophy, and religious tradition and so on.

In the 23rd chapter of the Lotus Sutra the Bodhisattva All Beings Delight in Seeing, later to become the Bodhisattva Medicine King, cultivated ascetic practices. After making offerings he rose from concentration, thinking:

“Although by means of spiritual powers I have made this offering to the Buddha, it is not as good as offering my body.” He then swallowed incense of many kinds: chandana, kunduruka, turushka, prikka, aloeswood, and resin incense. He also drank the oil of champaka and other flowers for a full twelve hundred years. He smeared himself with fragrant oil, and in the presence of the Buddha Virtue Pure and Bright Like the Sun and Moon, he wrapped himself in heavenly jeweled robes and poured fragrant oil over himself. Then by means of spiritual penetration power and vows, he burned his own body. The light shone everywhere throughout worlds in number to the grains of sand in eighty kotis of Ganges Rivers.

Within them all, the Buddhas simultaneously praised him: “If one gave away one’s countries, cities, wives, and children, that also could not match it. Good man, this is called foremost giving. Among all gifts, it is the most honored and most supreme, because it is an offering of Dharma to the Thus Come Ones.” Having uttered these words, they became silent. His body burned for twelve hundred years, after which time it was consumed.

This presages acts of modern self-immolation, where one soaks ones robes and clothes with flammable liquids, even drinking kerosene and gasoline.

In the Jataka Tales, ancient stories of the Buddha’s previous lifetimes, the bodhisattva/Buddha-to-be feeds his body to a starving tigress and her cubs. A rabbit jumps into the fire to provide food for the god Shakra who is disguised as a weary and starving traveler. Dating for the 5th and 6th century C.E. one can find numerous examples of self-immolations among the biographies of eminent Chinese monks and nuns.

These are legendary acts of altruism, as was Thich Quang Duc’s sacrifice. I am willing to call this altruism; willing to concede that these are not acts of delusion. But my willingness or anyone else’s does not make it “right, or proper, or whole in a Buddhist sense of the Pali word samma.

In an open letter to Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh has commented on the death of Thich Quang Duc, whom he knew well.

The press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest. What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance…. The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself, says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his people…. To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of construction, that is, to suffer and to die for the sake of one’s people. This is not suicide.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in a 2011 interview with the BBC spoke about the Tibetan immolations: “There is courage—very strong courage. But how much effect? Courage alone is no substitute. You must utilize your wisdom.”

Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama are spiritual teachers who also play prominent roles in the political and cultural identity of the Vietnamese and Tibetan peoples. They are necessarily moved by the death of fellow monks and nuns. Given their position it would be difficult to condemn such actions even if they wished to. I can accept that it takes “very strong courage,” to set oneself aflame, and “To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance…” But is it wise action?

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Questions & Propositions

I offer the following speculation. While I am inclined to doubt the wisdom and efficacy of self-immolation, it is really hard to say conclusively whether this is enlightened or deluded activity. In fact it is hard to say that about any action. Even in great enlightenment and clarity, as human animals we are ever subject to delusion. Japanese Zen Master Eihei Dogen writes: “Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas.” This is the human condition.

1. What is the effect?

Between 1963 and 2002, scholar Michael Biggs documents 533 cases of self-immolation worldwide. This number is profoundly shocking to me. To echo His Holiness: But how much effect?

In the case of Vietnam, several of these actions — the death of Thich Quang Duc and the May 1966 self-immolation of Thich Nu Thanh Quang, a Buddhist nun in the city of Hue, brought many thousands of people into the streets to oppose the war. In Hue militant Buddhist-led protests climaxed in the burning of the U.S. embassy. But there were 49 reported self-immolations in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975, acts that seem to blend into the war’s scorched tapestry of violence. A teacher of mine suggests that these actions were skillful means that helped to shorten the war in Vietnam. But is this so? The full violence of war really flowered after 1963 and continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975. In that interval millions on all sides died.

There is an inevitable “copycat” effect following an act that has received wide publicity. This seems to me an unintended consequence of spectacle. The “Arab Spring” was catalyzed by the December 2010 suicide of Tunisian street-vendor Mohamed Bouazizi. It is stunning to find that in the aftermath of Bouazizi’s death, 107 Tunisians tried to set themselves on fire. These were almost all young unmarried men from poor rural areas of the country.

Thich Quang Duc and his fellow monks were very clearly creating a spectacle. More than three hundred people were present as witnesses for something that was well-planned. Even police were in place, not to intervene in the burning — which they could have done — but to hold back the crowd. In fact, a second monk poured gasoline over Thich Quang Duc, which raises some question about “self-immolation” itself.

We seem to have a strange human proclivity to imitate the actions of others. So, one effect of these acts is to proliferate. If this is violence, then the violence is replicated. One person I spoke with called self-immolation, “A poisonous gift to the world.”

The impact of these activities seems to hinge on images and words. Press coverage determines both how widely the public knows about them and what the impact is. It seems, however, that while one response to press draws attention to very real issues of repression or injustice, another response is that we, the public, become inured to the images. We turn the page or change the channels. Or we become anesthetized to almost any image of violence. If the image does not reach us, if we are numb or overwhelmed, then the action itself loses its point. It ceases to have an effect outside the immediate circle of those who knew or were present with the actor.

2. What is the Motivation for Setting Oneself on Fire?

Here I fall into speculation. Motivations are mixed. Nothing is pure. You may disagree, but history seems to confirm the truth of impurity.

There is an altruistic dimension to self-immolation. The word “altruism” was coined by 19th century French philosopher/sociologist Auguste Comte. Simply put, his formulation was, “Live for others.” Note that he does not say, “Die for others.” Death may come at any time. It may be the result of actions that confront power. But to have death as a conscious intention seems problematic, even when the motivation is to save others.

Speaking with people who have contemplated actions like this and other socially/politically motivated acts that would inevitably lead to death, it seems to me that underneath altruism there is often a sense of powerlessness and despair. Nothing they have tired or contemplated has been able to deflect an opponent from the path of oppression and violence. So the impulse is to meet their violence with self-destruction.

In one sense, this could be seen as surfacing the violence inherent in circumstances. In another sense it is meeting violence with violence, somehow aiming at pre-empting the opponent’s violence with one’s own, like setting a kind of moral backfire. I guess there is a kind of logic in this, but it eludes me. Have acts of self-destruction served to shorten any conflict to date? Because we are intimately connected to each other self-violence can never be confined to oneself. It always ripples out in all directions.

3. Is this Suicide/Killing?

There is no sanction for “altruistic” suicide in the early Buddhist teachings of the Pali suttas. These practices seem to have surfaced in China with the development of Mahayana Buddhism. This represents an interesting tension between Theravada Buddhism — prevalent in South and South East Asia — and Mahayana Buddhism in North and East Asia. If Theravada could be said to emphasize the elimination of passions, which are the source of suffering, Mahayana Buddhism uses the energy of passions themselves for transformation. So one could see contrasting Buddhist perspectives: the cooling approach of Theravada and the fiery approach of Mahayana. At the same, at the center of Zen tradition Dogen Zenji quotes Zen Master Lung-ya who said: “In this life, save the body which is the fruit of many lives.”

Thich Nhat Hanh turns to the principle of altruism, arguing that self-immolation is not suicide, but the highest kind of offering for the sake of others. The Lotus Sutra suggests the legitimacy of such sacrifice. It is a bodhisattva act. Again, it is not within my powers to determine motivation. But at the risk of heresy, I think this is mystical mumbo-jumbo.

The First Precept of every Buddhist tradition is the vow not to take life. This is not a commandment from God as in the words of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a vow one makes in ones own heart and mind, and keeps as best one can. There is no “just war” theory in Buddhism; there is no affirmation of capital punishment. The Dhammapada (130) is very clear:

All tremble at the rod,

All hold their life dear.

Putting oneself in the place of others,

Do not kill or allow others to kill.

If we wish to look more deeply into the workings of reality, we could speak about the ineluctable laws of karma.

Intuitively I can understand how one arrives at the decision to set oneself on fire. Logic has its own compelling force. But I fear this conclusion is either solipsism flavored by grandiosity or a dangerous kind of group-think. I have seen both in action and they are not attractive. I know people who are dead or who are spending their lives in prison following this kind of exceptional logic. I would simply say that suicide is suicide, and leave it there.

4. Alternatives to Self-Immolation

Active nonviolence is a practice — exemplified in Gandhi’s India, in the American South of the 1960s, in the Czechoslovakia’s 1989 Velvet Revolution, Burma’s 2007 Saffron Revolution, and in many corners of the world. Repressive systems depend on violence to compel the cooperation of any given population. When that cooperation is withdrawn the repressive system falls. Not always quickly or easily or cleanly, but eventually. This is the powerful lesson of nonviolence.

I wish training in nonviolent direct action had been available to those who set themselves on fire. I think that would have been wiser use of their bodies and energies. Active nonviolence, as described by Martin Luther King, does not ignore the realities of power, but it refuses to resort to retaliatory violence. It accepts violence but does not initiate it. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” coincidently coming in April of 1963 just a few weeks before the death of Thich Quang Duc, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”

In 1965, 22-year-old Catholic Worker Roger La Porte immolated himself in front of the United Nations to protest the Vietnam War. Thomas Merton was deeply troubled by this act, which did not represent radical nonviolence to him. Still he felt some sense of ambiguity. In a letter he wrote: “…wrong as I think his act was objectively, I believe it did not prejudice the purity of his own heart.” In a later essay he took a clearer stand.

…nonviolence must simply avoid the ambiguity of an unclear and confusing protest that hardens the warmakers in their self-righteous blindness. This means in fact that … nonviolence must avoid a facile and fanatical self-righteousness and refrain from being satisfied with dramatic self-justifying gestures.

Could there be a nonviolent movement in Tibet that actively resists the overt and covert violence of Chinese hegemony, without falling into either violence or self-destruction? I would like to think so. All of us know the darkness of despair. Some live with it as a pervasive condition of life — internal and external. Many have been there, and many are living there now. Yet the opportunity to live is too rare to set aside. I return to these words: “In this life, save the body which is the fruit of many lives.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: In thinking about this painful subject and then writing, I had help from a number of friends and teachers. Thanks to Bhikkhu Bodhi, Annette Herskovits, Laurie Senauke, and Sulak Sivaraksa.

Biographical Note

Hozan Alan Senauke is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest, vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, where he lives with his family. Alan is founder of the Clear View Project, developing Buddhist-based resources for relief and social change. He was executive director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship from 1991 through 2001, and remains active in BPF as Senior Advisor. Alan is also a member of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists’ Advisory Council.

In another realm, Alan has been a close student and active performer of American traditional music for nearly fifty years.